DANCE

DANCE; Beyond Athletics, Artistry From the Waist Up

By John Rockwell

Published: April 20, 2003

LIKE many of Mark Morris's newer dances, ''Serenade,'' a solo he performed at his recent Brooklyn Academy of Music season, was received with impatient respect by critics who have long admired his work but who are now waiting for something grander and bolder. ''Serenade'' was pleasant but little more.

Its seemingly unimaginative title was an allusion to its music, Lou Harrison's ''Serenade for Guitar,'' but it also recalled Balanchine's ''Serenade.'' Since Morrisians are invariably Balanchinians, the parallel may have encouraged a certain restiveness in the ranks.

With all that in mind, it was worth reading a longtime Morris admirer, Robert A. Gottlieb, in The New York Observer. ''The section I found most effective was the first,'' Mr. Gottlieb wrote of ''Serenade,'' ''in which he's seated on his box and moves only from the waist up.'' Indeed, the interest in the dance lay largely in his use of his upper body and his rippling horizontal arm movements.

There are several explanations for that, ranging from the at least initially unflattering (he's older and bulkier than he once was, curtailing his capacity for faunlike leaps) to the biographical. As documented in Joan Acocella's first-rate critical study from 1993, ''Mark Morris,'' he grew up in Seattle immersed in folk dance, Serbian dance especially. Part of his distinctiveness as a choreographer is his recurrent use of the communal, nonvirtuosic steps and partnerings of folk dance.

In recent years, however, Mr. Morris has grown increasingly enamored of Asian dance, partly through his admiration for Harrison's Asian-inspired music. Another new dance on the same academy program, ''Kolam,'' was overtly influenced by Indian dance.

A telling aspect of Asian dance, if one dares lump a goodly part of the planet under a single rubric, is this very emphasis on the upper body: on the arm movements of the Bharata Natyam style from southern India or the fantastically sinuous and subtle hand gestures of kunju operatic dance from the Shanghai region or the theatricalized movement of so much Japanese movement, both old (Kabuki) and new (Butoh).

Often, the lower body remains relatively immobile in such dance, actually or perceptually (from the audience's point of view) constrained by fabric. The ''dress,'' as Mr. Morris called it, that Isaac Mizrahi designed for ''Serenade'' looked very much like a Southeast Asian sarong.

As much as we might love ballet and physically challenging modern dance, we can also regret their overemphasis on youthful athleticism and hence welcome a corrective influence from the East.

Ballet started at the 17th-century French court as elevated social dance. There is something both charming and comforting in seeing re-creations of early ballet, with their absence of point shoes and tutus and lifts. Men and women look more equal, and for all their courtly formality, the experience of dancing and watching seems less daunting than welcoming.

If ever there was a Western culture that seemed Asian, Chinese especially, it was that of the French Baroque. China and France shared a love for learning and art; ornate, immobilizing costumes; and complex social and artistic rituals.

But if one accepts that shared premise, Western and Asian dance subsequently diverged. Western dance became bold and overtly sexual and obsessed with youthful feats of physical skill. A ballet dancer struggles after 40; an Asian master is just coming into his or her own.

That disparity is one reason Netherlands Dance Theater III, founded by Jiri Kylian and devoted to dancers over 40, is so heartening. The company allows dancers to extend their careers without a fruitless effort to replicate their youthful physicality, which in any case may well have been eroded by injuries brought on by excessive athleticism. Instead, its dancers are offered choreography that emphasizes upper-body movement and actorly subtleties.

Similarly with Mikhail Baryshnikov's noble forays into American experimental dance and choreography, which also de-emphasize physicality in favor of conceptualism and natural movement. Such work offers one way for a great dancer, now in his 50's and with a lifetime of injuries, to convey his accrued artistry without trying to levitate like some Bolshoi Spartacus.

Not that all modern ballet is in thrall to the athletic. The partnership a few decades back of the Italian ballerina Carla Fracci and the Dane Erik Bruhn blossomed because of their histrionic skills and especially, with Ms. Fracci, her sinuous arms and hands. She was never a fabulous technician in the approved Russian sense. But she was a great artist.

By the time critics notice something in art, artists have almost always long since led the way. So it is with Asian dance and its impact on the West, which has by now insinuated itself into our dance vocabulary. Ballet remains popular, and rightly so: there is something thrilling about artistically inflected athletic accomplishment, and we'll always respond to that. But feats of studly skill are not all there is to dance, and Asians know it.

Mr. Morris knows it, too. ''Serenade'' may not have been the deepest dance in his canon. But perhaps it will help point us toward an aesthetic climate in which age and girth are secondary, even integral, to the wisdom and beauty of maturity.

Photos: Mark Morris in his new solo ''Serenade,'' left, and Malavika Sarukkai in her ''Khajuraho: Temples of the Sacred and the Secular,'' choreographed in the Bharata Natyam style. (Jack Vartoogian for The New York Times); (Marie Poirier Marzi)